Gestalt
-The “whole,” or the organizational patterns that we tend to perceive;
the Gestalt psychologists emphasized that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.
-By breaking experiences into their basic parts, something important is lost.

Figure-Ground
-The organization of the visual field into objects (figures) that stand out from their surroundings (ground).
-The figure is the object(s) that stands out or draws one’s attention.
-The ground is the background.

Grouping
The perceptual tendency to organize stimuli into understandable units.

Several principles of grouping include:

Similarity
The tendency to place items that look similar into a group

Proximity
The tendency to place objects that are physically close to each other in a group

Closure
The tendency to look at the whole by filling in gaps in a perceptual field

Continuity
The tendency to perceive that movement of an object continues once it appears to move in a particular direction